I took delivery of my Charge Freestyler at the weekend, promptly changed the tinsy riser bars for bull horns, the silly 1 finger mini brake levers for proper 2 finger ones, the saddle for a Charge Spoon and the pedals for a set of single sided SPD's with flats on the other side.
Had a couple of spins up and down the road outside my house and thought to myself - this is nice, wonder how the 42:16 gearing will be on my 9mile commute in London.
So today was my first ride - been riding on a flat barred geared commuter for the last 6 months - off I set from my digs and into the traffic, once up to speed the bike was fantastic, the steel frame smoothing the knackered London roads pretty well as I just pedalled along.
I thought the commute may take longer as I had a compact on the other bike with a 11-32 cassette, but no it took the same time and I arrived feeling fresher and not as sweaty despite the slightly warmer weather 😯
The return trip was the same, winner.
I can see the gear actually being a little too small as the only kind of hill on my ride is along Camden road between Holloway Road and Camden Street, which was pretty simple.
Overall much impressed was I 😀
i found SS for the commute makes a lot of sense.
gearing i started out lowish (61gi) but quite quickly changed up to (75gi) so that i could keep up with traffic better, ive got one long hill and figured so long as i could just get up that it was ok
eventually swapped out the original chainset and have settled nicely on roughly 70gi
makes a great noise 🙂
I think the 42:16 works out at 71gi with 700x28 tyres, apparently thats perfect for London according to www.lfgss.com or so I've heard 😆
Why did you buy a freestyle? Surely a standard plug would have had all the changed items on it as oem.
Have you swapped it over to fixed yet? I felt it was the next logical step when I first went fixed 3 months ago.
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I'm on 44/15 in London and I find that perfect. 42/16 is way too spinny unless you are riding at the typical fashionista pace of most London Fixie riders
Jon -> cheap off ebay for a nearly new bike, is the answer and I like the colours.
MM-> might drop to a smaller rear cog later once I get used to one the one gear, saying that can you get 44t sugino front rings?
http://www.velodromeshop.org.uk/catalog/Track_Chainrings-11-1.html
Just answered my own question, but £40 😯
I used to run 48:16 (80gi) around central london, but the only hill I had was a short 1/4 mile blast
I find that 40/15 works for me, nice and spinny along the canal from Walthamstow.
Not that i've ridden in lately.
I used to ride 66", but then I wanted to develop souplesse rather than tell everyone else how niche I was.
well, that pretty much killed that, didn't it.
42:17 along canals from Chingford, but that's with 2.4" tyres.
i have 48:18 on my with 622x28 tyres works out to just over gi of 72"
ideal gear round london/surrey - ok away from stops and ok on a run
if you are looking for a bag i got a carradice SQR tour - bit old man, but works really well - 16litre capacity and does not sway + unclips quickly
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this is set as a SS and not fixed, bean there done that fad on my old langster...
42:16 fixed and 23c, not quite so flat around here though
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